Hurricane Ivan generated giant waves, finds study

WASHINGTON - Hurricane Ivan, which caused a swathe of destruction across the Caribbean last September before crashing into the US Gulf coast, generated ocean waves more than 27 metres high, researchers said.

They may have been the tallest waves ever measured with modern instruments, suggesting that prior estimates for maximum hurricane wave heights are too low, William Teague of the Naval Research Laboratory in Stennin Space Centre, Mississippi and colleagues reported.

"We measured a 91-footer," Teague told Science, which published the study.

A wave that big would snap a ship in two or dwarf a 10-floor building, Teague said.

And the sensors may have missed the largest waves, which the authors estimate had crest-to-trough wave heights exceeding 40 meters, the researchers said.

Such giant waves disintegrated before they ever touched land, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

They were recorded by sensors about 120 km south of Gulfport, Mississippi on six moorings resting on the ocean floor.

Ivan was a Category 4 hurricane that blew across Grenada, and ploughed its way up through Jamaica, Grand Cayman and other islands before getting a fresh burst of energy over the Gulf of Mexico and hitting United States coastal regions.

- REUTERS